Body Man Reggie Love: Obama Trusted Me Because I Was Black (Video)

Obama’s former body man Reggie Love is out promoting his new book about his time with Barack Obama on the campaign trail and in the White House.Love says Obama trusted him because he was black.
So, who’s the racist?

In the book Reggie Love says he feared he was acting too white, “I struggled with the fear that I was a cliche seen by my peers as a black guy who acted white.”

One bond between Obama and Love was their mutual obsession with basketball. Another were the lessons Obama taught Love about negotiating a largely white world as a black man.

“I always said to the president, the candidate, ‘You had more exposure to it than I did because your mom’s white. You’re half-white, so you’re one step ahead of me,” Love, now 32, told Capital Download. “The one thing he said to me was, ‘When people look at me, they don’t see a mixed guy. They see a black man.’ “

Once in the White House, Love says, race was one reason the president continued to lean on him. “No matter what, he knew he could trust me,” he writes. “Beyond that, I was the only other brother working on the first floor of the West Wing, in the bubble every day.” Given the demographics of the country’s most powerful places, he says, it was hardly surprising there were no other black men in the inner White House circle.

When they were on the road, many people “assumed I was the security guy,” Love writes. “He’s tall. He’s black. He must be security. … I always responded with some variation of ‘No, you want the old, white, Clint Eastwood-looking dude over there,’ ” directing them to the nearest Secret Service agent.

Couldn’t the assumption simply have been made because he was regularly physically near the President in a suit, not because of skin color? Most of the Secret Service agents are not black, not old, and not necessarily tall.

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